Vray vs Maxwell - test for my future renderer

[pshupe68]

I have been using Maxwell and Vray for a bunch of projects lately. Usually I start my projects with Maxwell to get some nice ambient light greyscale images and then move on to Vray once I add materials.

Since the release of 1.50, Vray seems to be able to produce these nice greyscale images as well, and deal with glass very well.

I have tried to do final renders in both with varying degrees of success. I find Maxwell a little frustrating once I start with materials, and glass seems to be very problematic. With Vray I run into problems that the materials seem to be easier to develop but then it seems the images become flat and lifeless.

Now obviously these are mostly my own failings in my grasp of the subtleties of the programs. What I would like to determine is, which one will work best for me.

I will be posting images at the same stages in both programs and asking for advice on issues that develop. Please stay tuned as I progress. Thank you in advance for any feedback.

Regards Peter.

Vray


Maxwell


Here are the settings -



I am using a VraySky and Environment with Vrayphysical camera default settings except for 28mm focal length
I have about 30 Vrayplane lights, and expect to add more - all with default settings.

Please let me know if there are other settings you would like to see. Thanks - PS - updated the image for the attached settings - it rendered quite a bit faster.

[dlparisi]

Vray will work best for you .

I'm looking forward to seeing the progress on this but right of the bat I see that your vray frame took 13 minutes to render. I don't know what system your running but I'd think on any modern system you could get this very basic scene to render in 2-3 minutes. Be sure to post your settings so we can take a look.

[visumporec]

And what's the time for maxwell?

[add101]

interesting idea. i look forward to seeing it develop. what kind of space is it?
7 minutes does seem like quite long for a render like that.
is it a vray material?
the glass reflection will make the render take a bit longer, but the render time still seems quite long.
does the maxwell render have any glass in?

to speed up renders at the early stages i usually set the noise threshold to 0.1 or even 1. this speeds it up a lot, but adds some noise. will probably still be a lot smoother than the maxwell render.
also if you changed the Adaptive DMC settings in the AA to a lower number (for example min: -3 max: 2) this will also speed the render up a lot. you can then change these settings up later, or for the final render..

[pshupe68]

visump... - that's not really the point but probably about 20 mins! I find letting it cook over night the best for really excellent looking renders. The greyscale kind anyway - now I have to delve into materials to see whether M~R can work for me, with those long render times or if I can achieve close results with Vray. Both will require help from users here. Stay tuned. Thanks.

add101 - it is a chemotherapy suite for a cancer clinic - thanks for the tips - that is exactly the stuff I am looking for - I do need some, lots of, help with this stuff - I have seen the really nice stuff on both forums - purchased the software partly on those renders - now I need to figure out which one will be best for me! It is really subjective. Thanks again - and I will update soon.

Cheers Peter.

[paulison]

I think once you get further into using vray you will find that pretty much anything is possible... all of the settings are there for you to achieve the look you are after. I don't use maxwell though so don't want to compare the two...but my opinion is that at the stage you are currently at (based on looking at the images) then you really want to be able to experiment quickly and figure out what works for you without only being able to do 1 test per day... so in that case vray is good for tweaking and testing.

your vray test suffers greatly from low GI settings, poor lighting, antialiasing etc but i think the simplicity of the scene is also an issue. I'm sure as you work on things it will start looking a lot better. It may look alright though once you put some detail into the scene and add textures but if your final greyscale image looks like this, id say that your image is going to look fairly flat.


will be good to see the progress!

BTW: personally i prefer to completely finish a scene to make it as final as possible in terms of the model, then you can get more rewarding and useful results from doing whitecard/greyscale images. Also, you may get more useful feedback from people at a later stage as things are nearing completion

[pshupe68]

Here is a progress image from almost completed modeling stage.

Also - changed up some settings as per add101 - noise threshold to 0.1, BTW I couldn't change the Adaptive DMC AA Min. subdivs settings below 1, so I just left it at 1,4

I had some materials applied to the chairs/beds, and will start on materials very soon. The render time has come down substantially, which is nice for testing.

[rivoli]

BTW I couldn't change the Adaptive DMC AA Min. subdivs settings below 1, so I just left it at 1,4

you can set it to 1-1 though, or switch to fixed and set it to 1 (which should give the same result I guess). if there's any time left to gain, that might help.

[sv]

BTW I couldn't change the Adaptive DMC AA Min. subdivs settings below 1, so I just left it at 1,4

that's because it's a subdivision, not a rate.
With Adaptive Subdivision you can set the rate to be less than 0.

With Adaptive DMC, you can basically set a desired noise amount, and also set Vray the amount of subdivisions it can take to get to that noise level. So your basically saying terminate at a level of grainyness = 0.1, and use between 1 and 4 subdivisions per pixel to achieve that level of grain.

[add101]

interesting project.

looking a lot better already, with the furniture in.

a good plugin for speeding up renders for previews ca be found here :
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...607e513e1f63c9
it only works on max 9...

[pshupe68]

rivoli & sv - thanks for the tips - I will test and implement to see effects.

add101 - that looks cool - I'll give that a go as well.

Cheers Peter.

[pshupe68]

updated image

Here is a revised view of my project - I have added most of the materials, which have just been thrown in and will be getting some more input on finishes soon. I will have some questions very soon regarding lighting and materials. I find it is getting a little washed out, but it might be because there aren't that many fine details yet.



Thanks for the help - I think this project is already better than my usual just from a few initial comments. Thanks again.

Cheers Peter.

[percydaman]

looking good. Check subpixel mapping and clamp output and your bright light objects will have better anti aliasing.

[pshupe68]

Thanks percy - These are just my low settings for faster render times. I also have a lot of stuff in this scene that is not in view. I will be streamlining my model once the final view is picked. I think it is turning out quite well. Just need some answers about finishes and some more time on the fine details.

I have another question about materials - the pendant light shades should be like a rice paper / frosted glass material. When I add a vray light sphere, here is what I get. I need the light to be more diffused. Currently it is burning out too much. Should I be looking at the material or the light to fix my problem? Or possibly a compination? Is there a setting on the vraylight itself that will allow adjustments to falloff. I know I tried adjusting my material to be more opaque but it just got darker. I Would like it to glow more as I make the material more opaque. Please advise. Here is a test image of what I am currently using.

Thanks.



Regards Peter.

[sea2stars]

You might want to try using a Vray2Sided material or play with the translucency of your material.

.. a translucency example from a model I did a while ago.